


Miscues, Misfires and Missed Chances

by Emerald1



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-24
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emerald1/pseuds/Emerald1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gibbs and crew learn how they're viewed by outsiders when tragedy strikes the team. <br/>Which team member might pay the ultimate price?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Prologue_

"You sure you're doing it right?"

"Yeah, sure. I saw it on the internet. You just file this down, shorten that spring and you're got yourself a full-auto. Add in the twenty round clip that I've modified to hold fifty and you've got the baddest piece around. Nobody gonna mess with us when they see this thing." 

The skinny teenager slammed the clip into the weapon, not having a clue what he was about to unleash. With the safety destroyed and the internal firing mechanism mangled beyond recognition, the first round fired the moment it hit the block, the bullet barely missing his heavier friend. The self-taught gunsmith dropped the gun in a panic as it continued to fire. Both boys ran, neither making it far, as the gun bounced and skittered across the floor until all fifty rounds had been expended.

*

Miscues, Misfires and Missed Chances

*

"Gear up, got two dead teenagers in an abandoned warehouse in Annandale." Gibbs tossed his coffee as he grabbed his gun and clip from the drawer.

Tony was the first one to join Gibbs. "Couple of dependents, Boss?"

"Nope, but one weapon was left behind and it's a P226 SCT."

Nothing more needed to be said. They'd been tracking a stolen shipment of the specialized Super Capacity Tactical SIG Sauer handguns for months now, ever since the crate vanished on its way to arm the Navy SEAL teams based at Little Creek.

Gibbs wasn't happy when they arrived in Annandale, but the local LEO's weren't happy to be losing jurisdiction, either. The bodies had already been moved out to the waiting county's medical examiner's van and the spent casings were already bagged up. What the team could see looked like the remnants of a massive gun fight, with bullet holes through every wall of the empty building. There was little left to do at the scene except to try and find as many bullets as they could. The flimsy walls hadn't slowed down the shots and only a half dozen spent rounds were collected by the time darkness fell. Five more hours on hands and knees with flashlights in the dirt and gravel had yielded only an additional four mangled bullets. 

Moods were dark and tempers short by the time they returned to the Yard and Gibbs started barking out orders. "DiNozzo, figure out how our missing weapons ended up in Annandale in the hands of a gang. David, take it from the other direction. Identify those bodies and track the connection to the stolen shipment. McGee, work with Abby to reconstruct our crime scene. Figure out how many people were there and who shot who."

"Umm, Boss, I can do that from up here." McGee looked nervous to be down in the lab with the Goth and Tony started laughing.

"What's the matter, McWhine? Abby still on a rampage that you stood her up?"

"I didn't stand her up, I told her weeks ago that I wasn't interested in going to that concert. It's not my fault that..."

"Oh, yeah, Probie, it's always your fault. You should know that by now." Still grinning, Tony threw him a sloppy salute. "It's been nice knowing you, my friend."

"Yeah, right." Ignoring his smirking teammates, McGee threw one last desperate look at his boss before passing the cleaning crew and the night shift as he left the squad room.

As soon as the elevator doors closed, Tony held his hand out to Ziva. "Dead man walking. Twenty bucks says Abby nails him before he even gets through the door."

Ziva crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. "That is a sucker bet, Tony."

Behind them, Gibbs had to laugh at their antics. "She got that one right, DiNozzo."

\---NCIS---

Abby glared at the mountain of evidence on her table. Most of it had been collected by somebody other than her team, which meant that it was incorrectly labeled and bagged and most likely contaminated. Fingerprint powder residue was all over the one recovered weapon, meaning she would have a hard time pulling any trace. The local yokels hadn't bothered to turn over any of the fingerprints they'd lifted from the gun, but their work had destroyed any remaining fingerprints she might have been able to recover.

She removed the long, extended magazine from the pistol, hoping that there might be a few prints they'd missed on the top half of the clip. Grind marks were evident where it had been altered and she made a mental note to check in the original case notes to see how many of the missing guns were prototypes.

Setting the weapon down on the workbench, Abby walked into the ballistics lab to retrieve a standard 9mm magazine and loaded it with two rounds. It was well after midnight and she was running on nothing but adrenalin since the Caf-Pow machine was empty. Add to that the concert the night before that McGee refused to attend so she'd been without a designated driver and it all made for a testy, tired and short-tempered forensic scientist. 

Loaded clip in hand, she realized that the gun was still sitting on the workbench. Annoyed at the extra steps, she cranked up her music as she went back out and picked up the gun, shoving the clip into place as she turned.

\---NCIS---

Full autopsies would wait until morning, especially since most of the shots were through and through's, but Ducky removed the one bullet that was smashed against John Doe #1's femur and dropped it into the evidence jar held by his assistant. "If you would run that up to Abigail, Mr. Palmer?"

"Of course, Dr. Mallard. Are you sure you don't want to do the autopsy tonight?"

Ducky sighed as he looked at the two bodies laid out on the tables. "I believe fresh eyes will do us more good that the few hours gained by working all night."

Jimmy set the jar on the desk. "You're right. I'll put them to bed for the night and then drop this off to Abby on my way out."

"Very good, Mr. Palmer. I will see you in the morning." Ducky picked up his briefcase and coat as Jimmy started the familiar routine to close down for the night. By the time Jimmy was ready to leave, the elevator was again in use, so he took the stairs. Arriving one floor up, he grinned as he heard the familiar music before wincing as the volume suddenly increased. Down the hallway, near the door to the lab, he saw the same reaction on McGee's face before he suddenly dropped to the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Jimmy almost laughed at McGee's reaction to the loud music, but as he watched Tim fall, he realized that something was seriously wrong. By the time McGee's head bounced on the tile floor, Jimmy was running towards him.

"McGee? McGee!" 

A growing red stain appeared on the pale blue shirt and Jimmy instinctively dove to the the floor before cautiously crawling toward the injured man. "Tim, can you hear me? Who's shooting at you?" When he finally reached McGee, Jimmy put pressure on the wound, struggling to pull out his phone without raising up. Finally he was able to dial the number for their dispatch and ask for help as he continued to look around for the mystery shooter, hoping that Abby was safely out of range.

\---NCIS---

Frozen, Abby stared at the pistol in her hand for a few seconds before her scientific mind kicked in and she realized the possible scenario that had caused the chaos found at the crime scene. Carefully, she eased the magazine out of the gun before returning to the ballistic room to start tearing down the weapon. Between her concentration and the loud music she didn't hear Jimmy's yells as she made a call to security telling them of the misfire in the lab but that everything was under control. When the guard started to argue with her, she hung up as she'd seen Gibbs do countless times.

\---NCIS---

The plans had been in place for years, but this was the first time that every monitor and television in the building suddenly showed a bright red message announcing a shooter in the building. The three remaining members of the MCRT instantly grabbed their weapons just as Vance came running down the stairs, his own SIG at the ready.

'What have we got?"

Vance didn't slow down as Gibbs fell in beside him. "Unknown shooter, at least one injured in the sub-basement."

"Abby?"

Tony tried to reassure the older men as he and Ziva ran down the stairs behind them. "McGee should be with her."

"Unarmed." Ziva's reminder just increased Gibbs' speed.

The few agents on the night shift had joined them, but it was understood that Gibbs' team had the lead. When they arrived at the sub-basement, positions were taken without discussion and with few hand signals. It wasn't until Gibbs saw Jimmy bent over McGee that any words were spoken. 

"Palmer, on the floor, against the wall. Where's the shooter?"

"I don't know." Jimmy had to yell to be heard over the music still playing, but he refused to leave his patient. "I saw him go down, but I didn't see anybody else."

Gibbs sent the other agents to do a sweep of the level as he and his team moved in, along with Vance. Ziva dropped to one knee to cover Palmer and McGee as the three men cautiously entered the lab. Through the glass, they could see Abby's head bouncing along with the music, but she didn't look up until Tony shut off her stereo. Aggravated by the interruption, she stormed out.

"Tony, why'd you turn that off while I'm trying to work?" She registered the drawn guns and rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, I told Security not to bother."

"You told them not to bother?" Gibbs studied her, trying to determine if she was under duress, while Tony crept over to sneak a peek into the ballistics lab, expecting to find someone holding a gun to Abby's back.

Abby was embarrassed by her mistake. "Okay, I had a misfire, but it told me what happened out in that warehouse."

"A misfire?" Vance was getting a very bad feeling about what had happened. "Did you check where the bullet went?"

She waved off the concern. "I'll look later. If it had hit one of my babies, an alarm would have gone off. Take a look at this gun, Gibbs. You won't believe what I found."

"Abby..." Gibbs holstered his weapon and grasped her arms, knowing that this was going to be bad. Before he could say anything, she pulled away, drawn by the urgent voices she now heard outside her lab.

Her embarrassment growing, Abby called out as she moved closer to the door. "Don't you guys have anything better to do that to gawk? Go do your own work, I'll clean my mess up later."

"Your mess, Abby?" Ziva looked up as she continued to press her jacket against McGee's chest while Jimmy pressed against the exit wound on his back. "How could you say that? McGee is your friend."

Abby didn't answer her, didn't respond to anyone as she stared at the frantic attempts to save McGee's life.

\---NCIS---

Vance pinched the bridge of his nose as they watched the paramedics wheel McGee into the elevator. "All right, people, the FBI are on the way. Everybody move upstairs so we can seal this area off."

"We don't need -" Gibbs didn't have a chance to continue before Vance cut him off.

"One member of your team just shot another member of the team. None of you are even looking at the evidence. I don't even want the suggestion of impropriety to mar this agency any further than what's already happened tonight. Miss Sciuto, an assigned representative will arrive shortly. You will not answer any questions without your advocate present, is that understood?"

She didn't respond and Gibbs stepped closer to Vance. "You know damn good and well that this was an accident, Leon. A horrible, tragic accident."

No matter how he felt personally, the Director's job was to protect the integrity of the agency. "Then let's get it proven so we can move on."

Every person in the building was moved upstairs and down, spread throughout every possible room. Interrogation and conference rooms were used first, then offices, storage rooms and cubicles as MP's stood guard at the stairways, elevators and exit doors. To keep Gibbs' team in line, Vance insisted that Gibbs wait with him in the observation room as they waited for Fornell to arrive.

\---NCIS---

Tobias Fornell broke his all time record at getting to NCIS once he got the call. He met up with several other agents when he arrived at the locked down building and his eyes widened as they told him what they'd learned so far. Not believing it himself, he started his interviews with a very shaken janitor that had overheard a disturbing conversation in the squad room just moments before the shooting occurred. 

He didn't believe it at first, so he continued his interviews with several more people that had witnessed the same comments. Next, he spoke to the head of building security and heard about Abby's demand that they not send anyone down to check after she'd fired the weapon. The situation was becoming more and more bizarre as an evidence tech admitted he'd heard Abby threaten to kill McGee the next time she saw him.

\---NCIS---

Alone in the locker room for the moment, Chief Anesthesiologist Gregory Fuller buried his head in his hands. He'd been juggling patients for months, stealing small amounts of fentanyl, morphine and whatever else he could get his hands on, but he was needing more and more to get through the day. He straightened up as the door swung open.

"Hey, Greg, got a gun shot victim coming in. Better scrub up, that's if we can keep him alive long enough to get him on the table." The speaker was gone again in a matter of seconds and Fuller smiled in relief. A shooting victim that probably wouldn't survive was just what he needed.

\---NCIS---

The door to the observation room opened, but it wasn't Fornell that walked in, it was Samantha Ryan. "Director Vance, Agent Gibbs, the SecNav asked me to come observe the investigation. I understand that Abby Sciuto shot Agent McGee?"

Before Gibbs could correct her that it was an accidental shooting, Fornell walked into the interrogation room and circled around the table, studying Abby. She didn't acknowledge him, but shuddered and wrapped her arms tighter around herself. After the second circuit around the room, Fornell stopped and leaned close to Abby. "So, just how mad were you at Agent McGee?"

Regina Carter, the advocate that was representing Abby reached out and touched her arm. "You don't have to answer that."

"No, you don't." Fornell's eyes flickered up to the mirror for a second before he returned his full attention to the woman he was questioning. "In fact, it might be better for you if you don't, at least not until you have a lawyer present instead of just an advocate. I must admit I'm surprised, I thought he was your friend. You must have been pretty mad that he wouldn't cancel his plans and take you to that concert."

In the observation room, Gibbs turned to the door, determined to stop the questioning. Vance reached out and grabbed his arm. "You go in there, you'll just make it worse for her and the rest of your team." Frustrated, Gibbs shook off the restraining hand and continued to watch.

Abby still hadn't answered, but she started to rock slightly, and Fornell pushed some more. "What was more important than what you wanted to do? Or was it a who that was more important? Somebody that was more important to him than you?"

That question made her look up at him and Fornell saw something in her expression. "Yeah, I've seen the way you treat him, that really must have pissed you off."

"He always takes me." Abby bounced up without warning, startling the other occupants in the room, and started pacing. "It's his job, that's what he's supposed to do. He takes me where I want and he watches out for me. I had to drive myself all the way to Raleigh and back last night. I didn't even have time to go home, I had to come straight to work." 

Manic energy spent, she sank back into the chair. "He always does what I tell him." She bounced back up again. "That's it, I'll tell him he's not hurt and then he won't be." 

Carter held her hand up. "We're done, Agent Fornell. I'm going to request that Miss Sciuto be admitted to Bethesda for a full psychological evaluation." She looked into the mirror, hoping that the Director would agree. 

Vance turned to Ryan and she nodded. "It's probably for the best."

"You can't honestly believe that she deliberately hurt McGee." Gibbs stared at Vance, then Dr. Ryan. "She's in shock, that's obvious."

Samantha pursed her lips together as she thought over how to explain the situation. "Yes, she is in shock, Jethro. The question is, why? Abby is a mapper, everything has to be exactly where it needs to be for her world to be right and it appears that Agent McGee upset that order. I won't know until I've spent some time evaluating her, but it's entirely possible that she snapped. If nothing else, if she hasn't slept in forty-eight hours then we're not going to get a coherent statement out of her. I'll admit her, have her sedated, and then after she wakes up tomorrow I can properly evaluate her."

"I thought you didn't have a practice?"

"I don't, but I still have staff privileges at Bethesda. If you want Rachel to do it, then you'll have to admit Abby into a civilian mental hospital where we will have no say. Do you want to take that risk?

Out of options for the moment, Gibbs threw his hands up in the air as he started to pace.

\---NCIS---

"Pressure's dropping, we've got to get him open and find that bleeder." The surgeon glanced down at his patient before turning his attention to his anesthesiologist. "Gonna be a tricky one, Greg."

Fuller nodded without looking up as he injected the paralyzing drugs into the IV port. Part of him felt bad for what this man was going to experience, but the drug addict inside really didn't care. Chances were, he'd code before they got him off the table and his suffering would be brief.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note #1 - LIfe is not great in my corner of the world and I can't promise any posting schedule. I'm still writing, but being online to post is a tad difficult at the moment. Especially for a story I'm getting slammed for by people who haven't even read it.
> 
>  
> 
> Author's note #2 - If you've read any of my work, you'll know that I like to explore deeper than just casual fluff stories. I will put the characters in a situation where conflicts can arise and has to be dealt with, using past canon events as a point to explore for example. In this story, we are looking at how others view the team. Why doesn't Abby wear her normal clothes to court, is it perhaps because people have pre-conceived notions about a woman wearing black lipstick and gothic attire? Gibbs has run roughshod over other agencies and agents in the past, was everything immediately forgotten and forgiven? McGee has been called a whiner, but is he? Do the women downstairs really like being called "baggy bunnies" by DiNozzo? If delving into the psyche of the characters as they deal with events and circumstances that are beyond their control is something you see as character bashing, then perhaps my stories aren't for you.

Dr. Ryan left for Bethesda with Abby, two FBI agents in tow as Fornell joined Gibbs and Vance in the Director's office. Gibbs was immediately on the defensive. "Fornell, you can't honestly believe that Abby deliberately gunned McGee down."

"Gibbs, I hate to say this, but in all honesty, I can't discount the possibility. Yesterday, she was heard," Fornell pulled a notepad out of his jacket pocket and read the quote directly. "I'm going to boil him from the inside out and leave no forensic evidence."

"She threatens that all the time, Tobias. That doesn't mean anything."

Fornell referred to his notes again. "Tell me, Gibbs, when you ordered McGee down to the lab tonight, did he go willingly?"

"Well, no, not exactly." 

"Not exactly? Didn't McGee specifically ask not to work with her tonight?"

Gibbs understood how it could look as he continued to argue with Fornell. "They bicker."

"Bicker? And the rest of your team bets on whether or not he'll survive each encounter?" Fornell flipped through to find the notes he needed. "Agent Marcus Sanders reported that, and I quote, Agent DiNozzo tried to bet Agent David twenty bucks that Abby nails him before he even gets through the door, but Agent David called it a sucker bet and Agent Gibbs agreed with her. The entire cleaning crew and two other agents reported the exact same thing. One of them also said that DiNozzo asked if she was still on a rampage and told Agent McGee that it was always his fault." 

Fornell shook his head as he tucked the pad back into his pocket. "Five minutes later, she shoots McGee before he could get through her door and then calls down to security to tell them she had a misfire and it's all under control. When they argued because they've got Palmer on the other line, she hung up on them and went back to work. Do you see my problem? Damn it, Gibbs, McGee would have bled to death twenty feet from her if Palmer hadn't been there." 

Vance shook his head. "A weapon was fired in an unsafe manner, Gibbs, and she didn't even bother to check. Even if everything else is a coincidence, that's gross misconduct."

For once Gibbs didn't have an answer as he sunk back into his chair.

\---NCIS---

"Boss, they won't tell us anything." Tony was steaming as he and Ziva were lead into Vance's office. "Since when does the FBI dictate policy to us?"

"Since our agents started getting gunned down in the building by their coworkers, Agent DiNozzo." Vance was not happy at the things he'd heard about what he considered his best team. An FBI tech came in before he could go any further.

The tech went straight to the video equipment on the wall. "We pulled the surveillance tape from the lab, Agent Fornell, you said you wanted to see it."

The playback started and everyone leaned closer to watch. The black and white image didn't give a great amount of details, but they could quite clearly see the expression on Abby's face as she stormed out of the ballistics lab, cranked the music up as loud as it would go and slammed the clip into the receiver, pointing it off-screen. The weapon fired instantly, then she turned and walked back into the ballistics lab, staring at the gun.

Shaking his head, the tech stopped the tape. "We'll clean up the images back in our lab, but I figured you'd want to see it. By the way, the weapon is totally dissembled, she didn't waste any time."

Fornell glanced over at Gibbs, who was still staring at the plasma. "Thanks, Nathan. When you finish processing the scene, make sure to let Sacks know. He'll be assigning guards until we release the facility back to NCIS."

"Is that really necessary?"

"You tell me, DiNozzo. How far would you go to protect Abby Sciuto? I've got a pretty good idea, but what I don't know is how far you'd go to protect McGee. I'm guessing it isn't nearly as far." Fornell stood and leaned over Tony. "I'll have my agents escort you back, it's going to be a long night."

\---NCIS---

Ducky arrived at Bethesda just as they were sedating Abby and stood in front of the observation window to get Dr. Ryan's attention. She nodded and waited until the drugs had been injected into the line before leaving the room. "Dr. Mallard, thank you for coming."

"What on earth is going on? Why has Abigail been admitted, and why is she in the psychiatric unit of all places?" He thought back to the last time he'd seen her. She'd seemed more high strung than usual, but it wasn't unheard of to see her like that when they got a new case. "And, good heavens, why is she in restraints?"

"Abby became quite upset with the staff when they didn't have the brand of toothpaste she uses." Ryan waited, she'd been surprised by how upset the Goth had been about the toothpaste, even more so than being forced to remove all her jewelry and piercings.

"Yes, well, Abigail takes her oral hygiene very seriously. I believe it's considered a matter of family honor, but what precipitated her arrival here to begin with? 

Dr. Ryan didn't enjoy giving out bad news, but she couldn't help but be fascinated by the reaction at the moment it was given. "I'm afraid that Abby shot Agent McGee earlier this evening."

"What?" Ducky's face lost all color. "No, that's not possible. Abby wouldn't hurt anybody and especially not McGee."

"Well, Jethro is convinced that it was an accident."

She wasn't the only one there that studied the human mind. "You're not so sure."

"Let's just say that her reactions were atypical. She made no attempt to cover up the shooting, like one would expect after an attempted murder. On the other hand, she made no attempt to render aid, just left him laying there and continued with what she was doing. Between that, the sleep deprivation she's suffering from and the fact that she was unusually angry with him this evening, we can't rule anything out."

"Hmm." Ducky was nowhere near convinced, so he marched into the room. The nurse looked up at Dr. Ryan, but she nodded her approval and so the nurse backed off. Ducky leaned close to Abby and laid his hand on her forehead. "Abby, my dear?"

It took a moment before she opened her eyes. "Ducky, they wanted me to use generic toothpaste."

"I'm sure one day will be fine." He could tell she was losing the battle to stay awake. "Abby, tell me about McGee." 

"Being stupid... told him... told him."

"Told him what?" Ducky shook her arm to keep her awake. "You told him what, Abby?"

"Knows better, bad McGee. Bad, bad McGee."

"Oh, my." Horrified at what she'd let slip, Ducky raised up and looked over his shoulder at Dr. Ryan, realizing that she was flanked by two armed men as he finally realized how serious the situation was. "Oh, my, indeed."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, guys for all the wonderful comments and support. I'm sorry I haven't answered each one, but my daughter had unexpected and rather major dental surgery. Turns out that she had five wisdom teeth and number five tore through into her nasal cavity on that side. It's been a slow recovery.

Fornell walked into the conference room with two cups of coffee, handing one to the seated man. "Here you go, Palmer."

"Thanks, Agent Fornell." Jimmy gratefully took the offered cup, wrapping his fingers around it to feel the warmth soak into his hands. He was in a clean pair of scrubs, his earlier clothes now tucked away into an evidence bag, but he could still feel the dried blood on his hands no matter how often he washed them. "Have we heard anything, how's McGee?"

"Still in surgery. Under the circumstances, I suppose that's a good thing."

Jimmy's head bobbed up and down as his nerves came to the forefront. "Yeah, the way he was bleeding, I was afraid he wasn't going to last long enough to make it to an operating table. I've never seen anything like that. Our patients have stopped bleeding by the time we get them."

"All right, let's talk about what you did see." Fornell sat down across the table from Jimmy and set out a digital recorder. "Start at the beginning, but first state your name and your position here at NCIS."

He leaned closer to the device. "I'm Jimmy, umm, James Palmer and I'm the assistant to the Medical Examiner here at NCIS."

"Tell us everything that lead up to what occurred tonight, Mr. Palmer." 

"Umm, okay, Dr. Mallard made the decision to not do the autopsies tonight because it was so late, but he did remove a bullet from one of the victims for Abby to start processing, umm, that's Abby Sciuto, our forensic scientist. He asked me to take the bullet up to her and then he left for the night. I took a few minutes to close everything up so I wouldn't have to come back down. The elevator was in use by then, so I took the stairs. Wow."

When he stopped, Fornell prompted him to keep going. "Wow?"

"It must have been McGee in the elevator. If I'd been a few seconds faster, it would have been me in the elevator and Tim using the stairs, then I'd have been the one..." Jimmy's voice faltered and then he shook himself to get back on track. "Well, from the stairs, I had to come down the hallway. I could hear the music coming from the lab. It was loud, but not louder than normal. I saw McGee walking towards the door to the lab and all of a sudden the music got way loud, I mean, hurt my ears all the way out there kind of loud. McGee winced, well, we both did, and then he just fell. I thought he was joking at first, but he didn't even try to protect his head... and then I saw the blood."

Jimmy stopped as he struggled with the memory of seeing his friend bleeding out on the floor. Fornell gave him a moment to compose himself, then urged him to continue. "What did you do then?"

"I... I remember diving to the floor and crawling towards him. It seemed to take forever, but I could tell he'd been shot and I didn't know where the shooter was."

"Did you hear the gunfire?"

"No, I couldn't hear anything over the music." Jimmy straightened up and looked at Fornell in horror. "Why would she have turned the music up that high? It was almost as if..."

Fornell had been asking himself the same question, but now wasn't the time. "When you got to McGee, did you see or hear anything unusual? What happened then?"

"I was putting pressure on the wounds, but I needed help. It's hard to put enough pressure on both an entrance wound and an exit wound at the same time by yourself. I was yelling, screaming, as loud as I could, but nobody could hear me over the music. I had to let go of one of the wounds to get my phone. I had it pressed against my face and kept yelling 'shooting in sub-basement with wounded' over and over again until I thought they'd heard me, but I wasn't sure until help arrived."

"At any point, did you see Miss Sciuto?"

"Not until later. Ziva was helping me keep pressure on the wounds and Abby stormed out of the lab and told us that she'd clean up her own mess later."

"Clean up her own mess?"

"Yeah, that's what she said. I thought it was weird, I mean, Tim's her friend."

\---NCIS---

Fornell may have been making an audio recording, but the video of the interview was streaming live into Vance's office. Once the interview was over, he turned to the man sitting across from him. "How in the hell did we get to this point, Gibbs?"

"That's what I'd like to know." Clayton Jarvis pushed away from the door and finally let his presence be known. I thought you were running a federal agency, Leon, not an out of control preschool." 

Vance glanced over at Gibbs, hoping the man would keep his mouth shut. "This was an isolated occurrence, Mr. Secretary, and there's still a good possibility that it was nothing more than a tragic accident."

"What happened to the safety protocols that were in place? How could a weapon being tested in the Ballistics Lab end up hitting a man out in the hallway?" Jarvis' arms were waving about by the time he was finished. "I don't like this, I don't like this at all. It makes the entire agency look incompetent, gentlemen, and that makes me look bad."

Vance was enough of a politician to know when to stay quiet. Gibbs, not so much. "Our people are not incompetent, sir."

"Well, obviously one of them is, Gibbs. Either that, or the rumors are true and it was deliberate. You've got twenty-four hours to figure out which one it is, then I want either her resignation or her arrest warrant on my desk. Is that understood?" Jarvis glared at them both. "I expect an answer. Is that understood?"

"Of course, Mr. Secretary."

Gibbs wasn't ready to buckle quite yet. "What if we find circumstances that caused the accident?"

"Even you're not that good, Gibbs. Twenty-four hours, and it had better be damned good because in seventy-two hours the secure exercises will be finished in the Mediterranean and Admiral McGee will be back and he's going to be asking me exactly how his son was injured. You had better have given me an answer." Jarvis turned and stormed out the door, his assistants scurrying to keep up.

"That doesn't give us much time to clear her, Leon, not if the FBI is going to be dogging our heels and locking us out of our own lab."

"And McGee, what about him?"

"It will kill him if we lose Abby over this. Besides, you saw that wound – they're going to have him pumped so full of painkiller for the next few days he won't even know what's going on. Let's get this settled so we can concentrate on him when he's ready for us."

\---NCIS---

Dr. Fuller stood in the shadows, watching the patient. He hadn't expected Agent McGee to start moving around so soon, crying out in pain, as the nurses tried to soothe him. He certainly hadn't planned on the man surviving, and that left him with another problem. The staff was assuming that the patient was already receiving the ordered level of post-op morphine and had documented his complaints of pain. If he were to suddenly find relief, it might arouse suspicion. Fuller felt the unused vial in his pocket and realized just how much medication would be ordered for the injured man. Maybe it was a good thing that he'd survived so far. Decision made, Fuller moved closer as he counted down the time before Agent McGee would be put on a morphine pump. He'd just have to clock a few extra hours to make sure he was on duty at the right time.

Inside the recovery room, Tim twisted the thin blanket under his hand. "Please, it hurts." 

The nurse bent over and checked the incision and the drains. "Mr. McGee, you just had major surgery, some discomfort is to be expected. If you keep tensing up, you'll just make it worse." Satisfied, she left the room, passing Fuller on her way out. "For a federal agent, I'd have expected him to be a little more stoic, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah." Fuller waited until she'd turned the corner before letting the smile cross his face. It looks like he'd hit the jackpot this time, for sure. There wasn't even any family or co-workers around that might start questioning the young man's care. He felt the familiar pangs that told him it was time and he locked himself into a nearby restroom to prepare his next dose.


End file.
